Category Archive

Ok, it’s apparent that I’m no fan of the Left Behind series. Years ago I read the first book and several of the first books of the Left Behind kids series (I was a teenager then). I didn’t really like the books very much. In my honest opinion, they were not well-written. I have several criticisms of it:

1. Low level vocabulary – There aren’t a lot of higher level words in here. I think your average middle schooler could read this stuff. This is good for people of that age, but not for adults like me. Readers need stimulation from creative use of vocabulary. It’s part of what makes the English language so wonderful: there’s so many possibilities with words.

2. Cliche phrases – Good night, there are so many of these. For anyone who wishes to be a writer, avoid these things like the plague in your writing. They’re ok if said by characters every once in a while. However, if they are constantly brought up, it makes the work look bad.

3. It’s just plain corny – I constantly got the feeling while reading this stuff that it’s, well, corny. The characters are not very deep and I got the feeling that the culture they were in was very surfacy American culture. In order to avoid corniness, read read read! Read all kinds of different books. It really does make writing better as influence from other writings impress the writer.

So, there you have it. My thanks to Dee Dee Warren for making this podcast on her website (yes, some of my criticisms are the same as hers). Her thoughts on this are quite accurate, in my opinion.